I don't think people are more susceptible now, at least in the sense that the probability that an average person would fall for a given scam given the same amount of information about the scam has gone up.

I think it is just that people are exposed to a lot more scams now. You see more scams in a month now than you would have seen in years 40-50 years ago.

Exposing people to a lot more scams increases the number of successful scam attempts, even if people are as skeptical or gullible as they were in the past, for several reasons:

1. If you fall for 1/N of the scams you are exposed to, multiplying the number of scams by K means you fall for on average K times as many scams.

2. Debunking scams is more work than promoting them. With much faster spreading of information nowadays, a new scam can reach a large number of people before the debunking is available.

3. Acting on a scam is faster now. In the '70s I wasn't just a few clicks away from being able to transfer irreversibly and untraceably a large amount of money to a scammer.

4. Many people now get most of their information via the same channels that the scammers use. Even if the debunking information is available there by the time they see the scam, many will miss it.

Even if a person sees as many debunking items as scam items, they won't necessarily see the right debunking items. They might see current scams 2, 4, 5, and 7, but see the debunking items for scams 1, 2, 4, and 5.